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This is the observation of NRMA's director of motoring services, Wendy Machin, who has just toured the entire stretch of the notorious highway - from the upgraded dual carriageways in the south to the narrow, winding road in the north.

"Before, people would have their accidents south of Taree. Then they were happening in Taree, and now they are north of Taree," Ms Machin said yesterday. "A lot of those black spots have been improved because there are more dual carriageways in the south."

Ms Machin's trip followed an NRMA audit of the highway, which concluded that 40 per cent of the road is still only one lane in each direction without safe overtaking opportunities. The audit pinpointed 32 black spots and 191 "black lengths" - stretches of road where three or more crashes have happened - from three years of crash data. It identified Banora Point, Ballina, Coffs Harbour, Ewingsdale and Ocean Shores as the worst of these stretches.

"There's no doubt the accidents are moving a bit further north," Ms Machin said.

Dual carriageways have made the southern half of the highway safer, but have also meant drivers can travel further before they get tired. Then, fatigue and poor roads combine to create a dangerous cocktail.

"People leave Sydney in the early hours to get away for holidays and then they get tired. At Port Macquarie and onwards there's a lot of very poor road - a lot of single carriageway with trucks and traffic mixing together," Ms Machin said.

The population growth in the far north has resulted in more cars at the same time as trucking companies realise that the Pacific Highway is quicker and cheaper than the New England Highway they previously used.

"The volumes of traffic are increasing and the standard of the road hasn't been upgraded to cope," she said. "There's a federal election coming up and we want to get both parties committing to finishing the upgrade of the Pacific Highway we asked for all those years ago."

The Prime Minister yesterday announced $2 billion in federal funding for the Bruce Highway in Queensland. The Federal Government is expected to announce a similar amount for the Pacific Highway before the election.

A former NSW coroner, Kevin Waller, who conducted inquests into the 1989 Kempsey and Grafton bus crashes in which 56 people died, spoke out yesterday about the delay to the Pacific Highway upgrade.

"Well, it's 17 years ago now, a long time, but I heard inquests into the two worst accidents that have happened in Australia," he told ABC news.

"And the first and main recommendation, of course, was that there be a dual highway between Sydney and Brisbane. Seventeen years later, of course, that still has not been done."

During her journey Ms Machin drove past the countless crosses on the side of the road and the flowers taped to trees.

Every day a Coffs Harbour couple, Alex and Catherine Alexandrou, pass the spot where their son Nicholas died. "I never stop crying. People say it gets better with time. It doesn't," Mr Alexandrou said yesterday.

Nicholas, 17, died near the Emerald Beach turn-off on the Pacific Highway in April 2005, after his car skidded along the wet road and into the path of an oncoming car.

"It is a bad stretch of road. There's crosses along the road everywhere round here," he said. "The roads need to be fixed properly; we need dual carriageways and those barriers in the middle so they can't cross over and have head-ons.

"Everyone says, 'yeah, we got a surplus' or 'it's the states' or 'it's the federal government' but no one is doing anything.

"How many people have got to be hurt before someone takes responsibility?"